The Age reviews The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

Cameron Woodhead reviews The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet for The Age.

***.5 / 4 stars

Zoey Dawson’s all-female Romeo and Juliet heralds the arrival of a fresh and exciting theatremaker.  Her version might flummox traditionalists: the play is condensed into ninety minutes, the role of Romeo becomes a tag-team affair, and physical comedy and choric effects are liberally deployed.  Yet this vigorous adaptation elucidates the character of Juliet like no other.

Set in her girly bedroom, complete with Twilight DVDs and white teddies, it’s a production drenched in adolescent phereomones, poised dramatically between innocencee and knowingness.

Brigid Gallacher’s Juliet blends moon-eyed wonder and a trenchant seriousness.  She’s an “old head on young shoulders”, an awkward creature whose naivety chafes against the shadow of the smart and strong woman she might have become.  The toughness and vulnerability poured into the performance erupt in the final horror of her death scene.

With occasioonal reservations, a strong ensemble cast carries the hot-headed rambunctiosness of the young male characters.  Of the five actors sharing Romeo, Naomi Rukavina’s brash and bashful physicality during the couyrting scenes, and Nikki Shiels’ tormented prelude to suicide, both straddle the gender divide with ease.

The play’s adults tends towards caricature, effective with Capulet (Laura Maitland) and his wife (Devon Lang Wilton), but curiously underdrawn in the Nurse (Carolyn Butler).

It’s a production directed with emotional intelligence and stacks of sass.  Dawson harnesses design elements and a range of performance styles, making Shakespeare sing to the experience of 21st century adolescence in a unique and powerful way.